


Pain Like Balm

by FocusOnScience



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: (I've been told I over-warn but also better that than the alternative :P), Acid torture, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Blood blood and more blood, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consentacles, First Time, Gore, Guilty Rick, Humiliation, Incest, Knife Play, M/M, Masochism, Medical Kink, Morty is a precious awkward spacechild of pain and confusion, Public Humiliation, Rick is an alcoholic who would just as soon not be feeling these feels thank you vm, Rick you need to give that boy some safe words, Sadism, accidental dirty talk, and work on your aftercare, consensual torture, everyone is guilty everyone is ashamed, in the name of science!, like lots and lots of both, like really really really bad, oh boy this is going to be a dark one, or at least a weird one, semi-sentient anthropomorphic cameras, using morty as a lab rat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2018-10-29 03:49:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FocusOnScience/pseuds/FocusOnScience
Summary: Morty is a masochist, and not in the "oh Daddy spank me harder" kind of way—more in the "why is my dick hard I am literally bleeding to death this is not okay" sort of way. Things get complicated when Rick needs to test out a serum that heals all bodily harm—which means inflicting some bodily harm on Morty.Based off my nonsense tag ramble onthis gorgeous artby the absurdly talentedrnmwincii. :)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trash_freak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_freak/gifts).



Morty knew it was a problem. Most days he tried not to think about it, like Rick said, tried to focus on his exhaustion or his fear or even the plain, empty misery that pushed everything else aside when he thought of his parents. Of course, he hated that feeling too, but at least he knew what he was feeling was right. Normal. Safe.

Well, a hell of a lot safer than the tendency he’d started to notice just before Rick abandoned them all on Tiny Planet. 

Morty wasn’t smart, but he wasn’t stupid either. He knew what it meant when he put himself in harm’s way. He knew what it meant when he let Rick shove him down stairs or off of cliffs or into a shoot out with an intergalactic drug cartel Rick had forgotten he’d stolen a couple million flurbos from. He knew what it meant when he woke up from what he’d generously termed “nightmares” about the time he had been attacked by a vicious flesh-eating scorpion thing that had tried to burrow through to his lungs. Morty had been almost delirious with pain, screaming and writhing and begging. Rick had to pin him down, a forearm pressed against his neck and a bony knee digging into the space right above Morty’s hipbone, as Rick burrowed two fingers into the meat of Morty’s chest without anesthesia, following the path of the parasite until he could drag it out by its little segmented tail.

The first time Morty woke up from such a “nightmare” with a raging hard-on he knew what it meant, but that didn’t stop him from trying to deny it. He put in hours upon hours masturbating to soft looking redheads on pornhub, tried to shrug it off. Still, by the twelfth time he woke up gasping a protest even in his dream he hoped would be ignored, aching and so hard under the blankets that even the soft friction of cotton was enough to send him over the edge, ‘don’t think about it’ was becoming less and less possible.

The first time Morty popped a boner in the field had been just a few weeks before Rick left. Morty had been shot in the thigh with a laser blast. Rick had torn a strip off of Morty’s shirt and used it to bandage the wound before throwing Morty over his shoulder and sprinting the almost quarter-mile to their ship. Probably Rick had dismissed the hardness digging into his shoulder as a weird fluke of blood flow, his body responding to a mortal wound by pulling out every last stop it could think of, or something. Maybe Rick hadn’t even noticed.

But even half gone from blood loss, Morty noticed. Denial was officially no longer an option.

Morty was a masochist.

Not a normal masochist either, not one that followed the rules of safe, sane, and consensual he read about on the few online forums he looked at. No, when you’ve had your insides liquefied, had every bone in your body turned to glass and shattered, it’s hard to imagine spanking or candlewax would do all that much. Fantasizing about them certainly didn’t.

He still had a scar from that laser blast, a big white mess of tissue he jerked off to almost every night. Rick had offered to get rid of it, but thankfully when Morty declined he hadn’t pushed. When pressing on it no longer hurt, Morty had been tempted to cut into it, just to try to reawaken the memory a bit. In the end he decided not to. Best to avoid anything that might leave more marks. He didn’t want to have to explain himself when Rick came back.

 _If Rick comes back,_ a voice had always muttered, bitter and angry in the back of his head.

But of course he was wrong—he was always wrong. Rick rescued himself, and really all he and Summer did was get in the way. He didn’t believe half of what Rick shouted at him in the garage—people who don’t give a shit don’t go around shouting about how much they don’t give a shit—but that was more frightening, in a way. If Rick didn’t care, had never cared, then nothing would change. But if Rick did care, and felt like now he had to prove that he didn’t?

Morty shuddered, lying awake in bed and staring at his ceiling, trying to forget the more legitimate nightmare he’d just woken up from.

Rick was always most vicious when he was trying to teach someone a lesson, doubly so if that lesson was about Rick. If Rick thought that not caring was a lesson he needed to teach himself, and that not trusting people to care was a lesson Morty needed to learn…

Morty closed his eyes, wishing sleep would come and he wouldn’t have to think anymore. Hell, he’d even take the weird pain dreams over this. (He’d take the weird pain dreams over almost anything else, if he was honest, but he didn’t need to let that thought out into the front of his brain.)

After a few more hours lying awake he heard a crash echo up from the garage. A few seconds after his cell phone went off. There was only one person it could be, so rather than answer it he just lay still until it stopped buzzing, suddenly sure he could sleep if he was just allowed a few more minutes…

It began buzzing again.

Morty sighed and rolled out of bed, pulling on jeans and a plaid shirt. He’d learned his lesson about visiting the garage in his pajamas—never know when a simple drop in would turn into a full on government coup. 

He opened the door still rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. Rick was hunched over his worktable, fiddling with some slides under a microscope.

“MoEURPty! Finally, I’ve been, been calling you for hours. Where the hell were you?”

“Sleeping, Rick. It’s like 2am.”

“You say that like it means something. People only sleep at night because, because back in the day if they went wandering around they’d get eaten by something. I-i-it’s troglodytic, Morty, it’s stupid, just a hold over from when our biggest problems were lions and dysentery. You shouldn’t—”

“Jeez, Rick, I get it! Too bad we can’t all be you, and, and only sleep when we drink too much and pass out. Is this why you called me down here? To yell at me about the two hours of rest I get a night?”

Rick’s unibrow had risen halfway up his forehead. “Wow, Morty, been waiting a while to let that out? Got anything else you’d like to say?”

Morty glared at the ground. “What do you want, Rick?”

A flicker of something between annoyance and concern passed across Rick’s face before he let it go, and leaned back against his workbench with a smirk. “Well, since you ask, Grandpa’s beaten death.”

Morty’s head shot up, eyes wide. Images of a zombie plague flashed through his mind, of having to abandon his family again, start over again—unless this time there wasn’t an in-built immunity for the Smiths, for him and Rick. Then they’d all be screwed.

“Rick! You can’t just— Whatever it is, p-p-please, don’t, don’t do anything like, like last time w-w-w-with, w-when you—”

“Jesus Morty!” Rick dropped to one knee in front of Morty, all swagger gone in the face of this unexpected reaction. As upset as Morty was he had to admit that Rick’s hands on his shoulders felt steady, that the concern in his eyes eased the panic. “Calm down, kid, fuck.”

Morty took a deep breath, doing his best to do as he was told. “If you destroy this world I won’t forgive you.”

"Oh." Rick straightened up and took a swig from his flask. Morty tried not to miss the reassuring weight of his hands. "Is that all? I thought you were having a panic attack or something. I’m not gonna destroy the world. I actually tried with this, so it’s nothing like your stupid rape potion.”

“It wasn’t—”

Rick slammed his flask down on the table.

“Fine, whatever! Christ, I invented something pretty damn cool here and I just wanted to show, just wanted to share it with my grandson, but noooooo! He’s gotta make it about the one time I made a mistake.”

Morty didn’t feel bad. It wasn’t like Rick wouldn’t have another invention the next night. Besides, he hadn’t actually just wanted to show whatever it was to Morty. He’d wanted to use Morty in some way, like Rick’s always used their Morty’s. He hadn’t… hadn’t really wanted to share something with him. Probably.

“I’m sorry Rick. I’m really tired, and I, I had a nightmare that, you know, it was like that. You, um, destroying the world, again.” Rick took another drink from his flask. “So, I, I just, when you said…”

Rick rolled his eyes. “It’s fine, Morty, forget it. I was exaggerating anyway, didn’t really beat death.” He grinned. “But I _did_ build us the equivalent of a portable black hole in the fight against the motherfucker!”

Morty glanced nervously around the garage. “Um, Rick, you don’t, don’t have a portable black hole do you?”

Rick groaned. “Morty, come on, I, I’m trying to—”

“Oh yeah, sorry, sorry.”

“It’s a serum that heals all injuries.”

Morty perked up. That sounded pretty unlikely to trigger a zombie plague. “Like the broken leg serum you stole from that other dimension?”

“No, _Morty,_ way better than that.” He was grinning again, excited in that way that Morty couldn’t help but mirror, that way that brought everything together, making all the chaos and confusion worth it because when Rick grinned like that it meant they were doing something _amazing._ “Like a serum that will heal literally any bodily harm done to whoever applies it.” With that he pulled out small glass jar of what looked like the oil Morty had seen sticking to bird’s feathers in posters telling him to bike more and recycle. A slight iridescence shifted with the light as Rick tilted the bottle, letting the oil lap up around the mouth.

“It’s so pretty,” Morty said, his voice hushed. 

“Yeah, and if you rub yourself down with it it’ll make you almost impossible to kill.”

“Wait, like, forever?!”

“Forever is kind of hard to test, Morty. It’s not a very scientific term, as far as the effectiveness of medication is concerned.”

“So, then for how long?”

Rick shrugged. “A feEURP hours, I think. There’s still some, still a few bugs I’m working out, but that’s, that’s where you come in. Once we’re done I should have a much better idea of its limits.”

Morty took a step back. “Done with what?”

Rick snorted. “Testing, obviously. Can’t just release this baby on the market without seeing what it’ll do first.”

“You haven’t tested it? Then how do you know—”

“What do you think I am, some kind of hack? Of course I-I-I’ve tested it, Morty, but it takes the state of your body when it first touches you as the standard for healthy, for absolute health, so I can only learn so much from hobos and random abducted aliens. I need someone young and healthy, Morty, and then I can put this out into the universe.”

“Aw Jeez, Rick, I don’t know…”

“Think of how many lives it’ll save Morty!” Rick waved his flask around as though they were arrayed before them, all the millions of lives Morty would save if he let his grandpa experiment on him. “I know that’s what, what really gets youEURP, gets your dick hard. Think of all the do-gooding. You could jack to that for at least a couple, at least a week.”

Morty looked away, bright red, fervently grateful that Rick had once promised him he had no interest in inventing any sort of mind reading ray. He could hear Rick’s voice in his mind, _I barely tolerate having to hear other people’s words, what could beEURP be more boring than having to listen to their thoughts? Besides, it’s not like I need a machine to tell me what you’re thinking._

“Well, what would you do? T-to test it.”

Rick eyed Morty, and not for the first time Morty wondered if he really could read his mind. 

“I’d hurt you.”

The words, rough and indifferent, went straight to Morty’s dick. A sound that he’d never expected to make in front of his grandpa escaped his lips, but he was pretty sure he managed to turn it into a noncommittal, “Oh,” without Rick noticing anything too strange about his grandson’s reaction.

Rick raised half of his unibrow. “What’d you think it’d be?”

“I-I-I don’t know, I th-thought it’d be, like, a t-t-test, like I’d… um… Hurt me how?”

“Well, there’d be the basics, cutting, burning, freezing, but I don’t know, I might creative with it once I get going. If I think of other types of injuries the serum might need to respond to.” He smiled, looking down at the serum like some people might look at, oh say, their beloved grandchild. “By the time I’m done, this baby is going to be flawless.”

“And if I say no?”

Rick groaned and set the serum down. “Well then I guess I’m fucked, Morty. Is that what you want? Your grandpa to get fucked right up the ass? No one will buy the serum untested, all those, all the innocent people will die, and I’ll be out the cost of materials.”

It was a bad idea. Morty knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn’t just… he couldn’t just not. Rick was a bullshitter and an asshole, but he didn’t lie about his inventions. If he said this could save lives, he meant it.

“O-okay. If it’ll help, if w-we can save lives, I’ll do it.”

Rick rolled his eyes, but he was grinning again. “Regular Shrimply Pibbles over here. Alright, take off your clothes. I’ll be right back.”

“What?! Why do I have to, why do you want me to take off my clothes?” He’d been counting on his jeans to at least give him plausible deniability.

“So I can see how quickly this shit heals. Plus it’ll save your clothes. Do you want your clothes torn and burned all to hell?”

“I… I guess not, but…”

“Then you’d better take them off! Here I am, being all, all considerate like you whine about and you, you just, you question me with your little—”

“Fine, jeez Rick, I’m, look, I’m taking them off!”

Rick watched as Morty struggled to pull his button up plaid over his head. “Morty, you’ve got to, gotta unbutton it.”

Morty’s head peaked back out of his shirt, glaring daggers at Rick. “I know.”

Rick snorted. “Sure. Anything you’re still wearing when I get back is fair game for me to destroy.”

With that he opened a portal and stepped through. 

The second he was out of the room Morty set to untying his laces. They were new shoes, since his last pair got destroyed by an acid breathing alien Rick brought home a few days ago, and he couldn’t just kick them off yet. Next he started on the buttons, but there were too many, and it was an old flannel, a bit too tight to pull off without unbuttoning all the way. _Besides, maybe if you leave it on there’ll be some tatters you can pull down to help hide your raging hard on when your grandpa starts cutting into you._

To his horror, his dick twitched in excited agreement at the thought.

Maybe he would just leave his clothes on after all. Maybe Rick wouldn’t really hurt him as bad as he’d said he might. Maybe he'd be able to control himself even if he did.

_Or maybe this will be the single most humiliating night of your life, you absolute moron._

Well, at least it would only be one night, and then it’d be over. No one else would ever know about it or see it, and tomorrow he could move on with his life knowing he’d saved thousands, or even millions of innocents. 

_Now, just stay down, and we might both survive this,_ he thought with a stern look at his cock, just as Rick portaled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so that went longer than intended! Expect lots of blood and sin next chapter. Never written straight up porn before so we'll see how this goes! (Oh, also I want to experience some of Rick's _shit, no, he's your grandson you sick fuck, stop it, no,_ so I might dance into his perspective a bit next chapter too. :)
> 
>  
> 
> Question for the gallery: what do you think Rick went to go get?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel dirty for writing this.
> 
> If blood, knives, or extreme pain bothers you this is probably a good place to turn around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That'll teach me to try to predict characters I've never written before!

Rick stopped in his tracks, his eyes tracing critically over Morty’s half dressed body, taking in his open pants and the flannel he was two buttons away from being able to shrug out of. To Morty it felt almost like a physical touch, but professional, detached. 

“What, were you waiting for help?”

Moty blushed. “I d-didn’t have enough time, you jerk. What did you get?”

Rick held up what looked sort of like an old fashioned camcorder, if camcorders had been invented by Lovecraft and Dr. Seuss’s lovechild. “Jerry broke my camera this morning, needed a replacement.”

Morty’s hands immediately went to zip up his pants, but froze when he caught Rick’s look. He was pretty sure his blush had spread all the way down his neck to his chest, and was definitely visible through his mostly open flannel. 

“You didn’t say you’d be recording this,” he muttered, looking down at the floor. _So much for one night and no one will ever know._

Rick tickled the base of the camera until it sort of giggled and a tripod shot out. “How else am I supposed to prove to buyers that my product’s any good?” Rick fussed with the camera, twisting knobs, turning dials, stroking puffs of fur. “Ask them to rub down in the stuff and pick a leg they don’t like?”

Morty tried to relax, eyeing the camera warily. It looked back at him with happy, frank curiosity. “Y-yeah, I, I guess that’s fair, but…”

“Of course it’s fair.” The camera set-up done, Rick walked over and stood facing Morty. With deft fingers he casually unbuttoned the remaining two buttons on Morty’s flannel. “Don’t worry, none of your little school friends are going to see you get beat to hell by your grandpa.” Morty didn’t realize he was backing up until his ass hit the workbench. Rick moved with him. Morty could smell the noxious alcohol on his breath. When Rick hooked a finger into the loop of Morty’s jeans and yanked them down Morty had to bite his lip to keep from making a noise _What the hell?_ he thought at his far too interested dick. _He hasn’t even started yet! What do you have to get excited about now?_

The camera shivered, its lens expanding as Rick straightened and Morty stepped out of his jeans.

“Rick…”

Rick ignored him, slipping a finger into the band of Morty’s underwear, looking bored, the movement almost clinical. Morty yelped at the touch and jolted back.

Rick paused.

“What?”

“I thought you said I could, could keep my clothes on and y-y-you’d just sort of, um, work around them?”

“I said I’d work _through_ them.” Rick stepped back, annoyed. “Thought I’d be generous and give you another chance, since that plaid is one of the few things you own that doesn’t make you look like you're still fourteen, but okay. Sure.” He reached past Morty and grabbed the serum. “If this is how you want to play it. Now lean back. This shit soaks in quick, but the more surface I cover the faster I can start testing.”

Rick made as though to pour the serum into his hands, but stopped. He looked at Morty, arched back over his workbench, chest just beginning to glisten with nervous sweat, and his bored, detached expression slipped, revealing for a heartbeat something that made Morty’s breath stutter. He was still wearing his underwear and technically still wearing his shirt, but suddenly he felt entirely naked.

Rick blinked, and the look was gone. He thrust the bottle into Morty’s hand, and took a long drink from his flask. 

“Here. Be sure to really work it in.”

“Aren’t you going to—”

“Don’t want to waste any on my hands.”

Morty nodded, and set to work. At first he watched Rick out of the corner of his eye as Rick moved around the garage, but something in his grandfather’s gate, the efficient speed with which he was sorting through guns and knives and strange instruments Morty could only guess at… _Jesus he hasn’t even started yet, you need to calm down._ Hoping to distract himself, he turned to look at the camera instead.

#

Because of this he didn’t notice when Rick stopped pacing around, furiously avoiding so much as a glance in his grandson’s direction, and finally turned to watch the show. Morty was looking straight down the lens. Rick watched as Morty dipped two fingers into the mouth of the bottle and, careful not to let any of the precious serum drip onto the garage floor, brought his fingers to his navel. He traced upwards, smearing the dark oil in a line up to his sternum before stopping to work it into his skin. Rick had to congratulate himself on the aesthetics—it looked like someone had liquified the night sky and spilled it across Morty's chest. He was nervous, and clearly fighting not to enjoy himself. To Rick’s eye he looked like any cam boy playing with himself for the first time, still unsure how much was performance and how much was his own genuine pleasure.

 _That is your grandson, you sick fuck,_ growled some part of him that, had it spoken up more often, might have been called a conscience.

 _It’s just an observable fact,_ he answered himself. _Doesn’t mean I give a shit. Besides, if I’m going to help the kid, I can’t be squeamish._

“Rick?”

Rick snapped to, realizing he’d been staring. 

“A-am I doing something wrong?”

_Everything. You are doing everything wrong._

“No, Morty. Just finish the fuEURPck up already, you’re taking forever.”

“Right, s-sorry Rick.”

Rick bit back something scathing, and then something marginally kind. Neither would do any good. He needed Morty to toughen up, needed to wean the boy off his praise, but if he broke him down much more he’d be nothing but a quivering mass of self-doubt, desperate for his approval. 

_Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that._

He answered the thought with a drink, and picked up a knife. Something plain to start with. He’d build up.

“Okay that’s gooEURP, that’s fine. Stop wasting it.” 

Morty shifted nervously, glancing between Rick and the camera. “I dunno, Rick. I d-don’t feel any different. Shouldn’t we wait for it to, for the healing to take effect?”

Rick rolled his eyes. “And how am I supposed to know when that happens if I’m not cutting into you?” Morty stifled a little noise at that and Rick snorted. This would be easy. Rick would have a few laughs, force Morty to quit with his repression bullshit and stop putting them both in danger on adventures, and they’d all move the fuck on. Nothing more, nothing less.

_So what the fuck are you worried about?_

Rick took another swig as Morty slipped the rest of the way out of his flannel and hopped tentatively up onto the workbench.

#

Morty willed his dick to be still as Rick approached him. This was going even worse than planned. All he could see was the florescent light of the garage glinting in Rick’s eyes, the exact same way it glinted off the knife in his hand.

When Rick got to him he put a hand on Morty’s chest and pushed him back flat against the surface of the workbench, hard. Morty whimpered.

“Lift up your legs.”

Morty did as he was told, and Rick swiveled him around so he was lying fully stretched out. He was still just short enough to fit, though he’d started to hit a growth spurt and if Rick had invented this serum even a month later his feet probably would have hung off the edge just a little, or maybe—

Rick pressed the blade to Morty’s skin, and his thought just stopped.

The blade dragged down, leaving a small line of red.

It was the best thing Morty had ever felt.

It was nowhere near enough.

“R-rick…”

“Shut up, you little shit, I barely nicked you. I’m just checking to see if you’re healing yet.”

Morty sat up a bit and looked down at his chest. He couldn’t see the start of the cut—it must be around the base of his neck—but he could see the thin red line stretching down, perfectly straight, perfectly even until it ended with medical abruptness at the bottom of his ribcage. Rick had made the first cut of a T-incision, the cut used to open patients up at the start of an autopsy, to crack open their ribcage and get at their heart and lungs. Morty had seen Rick do it a couple of times. Morty closed his eyes at the thought of Rick doing that to him, his hands feeling around Morty’s most vital organs.

“The serum doesn’t have any sort of anesthesia, does it?”

Rick was rolling over a small table full of the instruments he’d collected while Morty rubbed the serum in. “Of course not. It’s supposed to be a long-term thing, Morty. Can’t have people living without pain.”

As he spoke Morty felt a strange prickling in his chest and then a sharp pain that made him gasp. He looked down and watched as his skin knit together. His toes curled. 

He looked up and saw Rick leaning far too close, eyes alight. “Does it hurt Morty?”

Morty nodded. “W-worse than the cut, actually.”

“Good.”

That was the wrong response, but then Rick’s knife was on him again and Morty couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but press his head into his grandpa’s workbench and desperately try not to moan.

Before long the cuts were healing almost as fast as Rick was laying them down. Morty was impossibly tense by this point with the effort of keeping quiet. Finally he sat up, forcing himself to breathe. Rick would think he was some kind of baby.

He watched in rapt fascination as Rick’s knife dragged across his stomach. The cut lagged about six inches behind the blade, leaving only a streak of blood on smooth skin. Rick pressed deeper and the lag extended another inch, his body taking longer with the more serious cut. Rick pressed a bit deeper still, and Morty’s head thunked back against the workbench as he stifled a breathy little whimper. He knew he was in no real danger, that the pain was without consequence, but his heart was going about seventy miles a minute and he was fighting hyperventilation. _Rick won't let anything really bad happen. Not when it's so easy for him to protect you._

 _And it feels **so good**_. He'd never felt so anchored. He was completely within Rick's control. His only job was to feel this and survive, to keep breathing and let the pain rip through him.

He wanted more.

“You okay there, Morty?” Morty’s eyes were squeezed shut but he could hear the smirk. 

“I’m fine!” His voice broke on the second word. 

“Really? Cause you seem to be having a bit of a hard time here.” Rick punctuated his point by digging the knife in deep, well past the skin and into muscle. Morty jolted up with a noise that he’d liked to have called a scream.

“Rick! I, I, I think that’s, I think that’s enough for your, for proof. It works, everyone knows it works, really, really—” Morty shuddered when the knife dug in just above his hipbone, suddenly incapable of speech. He met Rick’s eyes, and was suddenly aware of how close they were. Rick angled the knife and let it press point down and Morty could feel it, could feel the tip scratching little marks through the thin muscle and directly onto the jut of bone. He’d just begun to think of his hipbones as nice this past year. Not sexy exactly, but tracing the v of them in the mornings he could imagine someone lining them with kisses, some day.

Entirely caught in Rick’s gaze, Morty wondered distantly if he could ask him to leave a scar. 

But something shifted behind Rick’s eyes and he looked away. His gaze went to his knife and he let out a breathless laugh. “Holy shit, Morty.”

Now quite light-headed from the pain, Morty managed to prop himself up a bit higher on his elbows and look.

Rick twisted the knife with a particular flourish as Morty’s rapidly healing body tried to close around it, but that’s not what Morty’s eyes went to. No, his eyes went six inches to the left, to what was, inarguably, his hard, straining cock leaking against his underwear, and jumping with every twist of the knife. 

Rick waggled his unibrow. “Like I said, having quite a hard time here.”

He laughed at his own joke.

Horrified, Morty struggled to sit up, but Rick slammed him back down, pinning his wrists above his head with one hand. _God I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was, was—_

“Rick! Let me go!”

“You know, I thought it’d take a bit more than some light blood play to get you going, but fuck me, Morty, hardly ten minutes in and you’re barely keeping it together!”

“What the hell Rick! Y-y-you knew what this was going to do to me?”

“Of course I knew. I’d have to be Jerry not to have noticed by now.”

“But I—” 

“You were hard against my shoulder while the life was draining out of you. I slapped you a few days ago and you practically moaned.”

Morty’s eyes stung with the promise of tears. “So was all this a set-up? Was it j-just to, to humiliate me? The serum—”

Morty leaned back and closed his eyes. He heard Rick put the knife down. Suddenly he felt arms gathering him up, making him sit up. Rick pulled his chair back over and sat down in front of him.

“The serum works, obviously. I didn’t lie, Morty. I just wanted you to accept yourself a bit, stop with all this repression bullshit so your masochism would stop coming out on our adventures in ways I can’t control.”

“And you couldn’t think of any other way to do that? You could have just, just talked to me, Rick!” 

Rick grinned at him. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Morty felt his dick twitch. _Traitor,_ he thought at it, but then something clicked into place and he felt his stomach drop through the floor. “You have fun getting me hard?”

“What? Fuck no, Morty, don’t be sick!” Rick looked actually disgusted, which was reassuring and hurtful in about equal parts. “I just, I was trying to, to make you see it’s not some dirty thing you have to repress. The fun was, the fun was supposed to be your face when I made you admit it, but, shit, you’re such a little pussy you ruined it.”

Morty stared at Rick. His grandfather wasn’t meeting his eyes. 

“Rick…”

Rick stood up. “It’s fine.” He took a long swig from his flask. “For the best. You’re right, I should, I should just kidnap some random alien to test the serum on.”

He turned to go, but Morty jumped off the table and grabbed onto his labcoat. “No!”

Rick turned back, half his unibrow raised. Morty sheepishly let go.

“Sorry, I just… You shouldn’t do that. I-I-I mean, it’d be wrong, and you already used all that serum on me. We should, should probably…”

“Should probably what, Morty?”

He shifted from foot to foot, not wanting to say it. He looked over and sure enough the camera was still on, or awake or whatever, staring straight at him. He blushed. Despite everything Morty was still hard. _What the hell is wrong with me?_

#

Watching Morty’s cheeks turn red again as he realized everything had been caught on tape, Rick knew he should leave. There was no reason for him to stay; it was all out in the open now. If Morty kept on with his bullshit when they were out on adventures Rick could just call him on it. He could grab an alien for the rest of the tests. The serum wasn’t actually hard to make now that he had it down. He should let his grandson put some clothes on, let him leave before this got worse.

Morty looked up at him. The cuts had all faded, the only sign of their recent activity the blood drying on his skin and his hard cock pressing tight against his underwear. The kid looked so guilty, hovering between dejected and hopeful.

Rick drained his flask and tossed it behind him, pulling another from an inner pocket and immediately taking a swig.

“Get back on the table Morty.”

Morty practically leaped up, trying to hide his eagerness and failing utterly as he stammered out, “Oh, w-w-well if you, if you think that’s what’s best, Rick!”

_It’s not taking advantage if you aren’t getting anything out of it._

Rick spent a while looking through the instruments, putting off turning to Morty. He could hear the kid trying to take deep, even breaths. He selected a small bag of powder. If he was going to do this, might as well run the full gamut. He did, after all, have a product to sell.

Morty’s chest still glistened with sweat. 

Rick tapped the powder out carefully. 

As soon as it hit Morty’s skin it began to sizzle.

Morty twitched, but kept still.

Rick tapped out more, and more, moving around the plane of his stomach and down his thighs, looping and twisting, watching in fascination as the powder reacted with the sweat to form a nice acid. Just as he had planned it began to eat through Morty’s skin. The camera must have sensed Morty’s pain because it began to perk up again. Rick glanced back and shifted to the side, letting it know it was okay to approach. 

Just as it arrived the first pinch of powder hit muscle and began to be sealed over by skin. 

Morty, who had been shifting back and forth, finally broke. 

“Rick! Rick it’s inside, I can— I can feel it inside me, Rick, h-h-help, I—”

Rick ran a soothing hand up and down Morty’s side, shhing him. He could feel the heat of the acid beneath his skin, burning though. “It’s okay Morty, trust me. Just trust me.”

Rick watched Morty lap up the reassurance like something precious, believing Rick without hesitation or reserve. Despite everything. Despite knowing better.

“I need you to tell me what you feel Morty. Tell me where it hurts.”

“Everywhere, Rick, it hurts everywhere!” Rick knew he was leaning too close, knew he was enjoying the smell of burnt skin and blood more than was even remotely okay.

“Details, Morty, I need details. The acid’s in you now—” The burnt sections of Morty’s skin had entirely healed over as the last of the acid passed beneath the surface. Morty began to thrash, and without hesitation Rick grabbed a knife and stuck it through Morty’s shoulder, pinning him to the table.

Morty screamed, and Rick closed his eyes. He could feel the sound in his bones. He was glad he’d sound proofed the garage years ago. _Not that you’re getting anything out of this._

He leaned close so his mouth hovered by Morty’s ear.

“Do you want it out, Morty?”

“Yes, yes, please, Rick, it hurts, it hurts so bad, please!”

“Then you have to do what I told you, you have to give me details.”

Morty wailed. “It’s like, like fire inside me! I can, can f-f-feel it eating into my bones, Rick!” 

“Do you like it?”

Morty choked out a sob. “It’s going to kill me!”

Rick growled and Morty shuddered beneath him. “I won’t ask again.”

“Yes, yes, I like it, I love it! It’s, Rick, it’s everywhere in me, you’re everywhere, y-y-you’re, fuck, Rick, please! I can’t take it!”

Rick stared. _Had he said…_

“Please!”

Rick shoved his doubts aside and without warning pulled the knife from Morty’s shoulder, eliciting another scream, and lifted the boy off the table just in time to watch the acid eat its way through the skin of his back and fall, hitting the floor and beginning to eat through the cement of the garage. _Eh, deal with it later._

Without giving Morty a second’s pause he put his grandson back on the workbench and grabbed up another instrument, this one a hot knife. It would burn as it cut, so the marks would last a little longer. 

Rick began at the tip of Morty’s chin as the kid caught his breath, tracing down over his racing pulse. Blood spilled down his throat and across his chest before quickly stopping as the skin sealed over.

Rick traced lightly, letting Morty recover.

“Tell me when you’re ready.”

Morty licked his lips. “I, I’m ready, Rick, but… could you stick to the knife for a bit?”

Rick repressed a groan. The question was so sweet, so unsure, as though this would be the greatest gift, the most generous indulgence.

“Yeah, Morty. Grandpa’ll stick to the knife for as long as you want.” As though to prove his point Rick began to press a little harder.

Morty whimpered. 

It didn’t take long before he was gasping again, panting and biting his own lip hard enough to draw blood, even with the serum. Rick wondered if Morty realized the pattern he'd been tracing with the knife, if Morty could feel the shape of Rick's name as he carved it into his grandson's skin over and over again. He hadn't exactly meant to, but it just started happening and Rick wasn't one to deny an impulse. 

_Don't think about it._

Rick let the knife ghost over the hard outline of Morty's cock and Morty choked on a moan. 

Maybe it was the sound, maybe it was the way Morty’s cock jumped at the touch, or maybe it was just time, maybe he had just been far too patient for far too long, but for whatever reason Rick couldn’t take it anymore. With one clean swipe he cut away Morty’s underwear, long since ruined with blood and precum.

“Rick? What are you—?”

Morty didn’t get a chance to finish because Rick was swallowing him whole and there was no chance Morty was going to be able to form a coherent sentence with Rick Sanchez’s fiendishly talented mouth wrapped around his cock. It was the most he could do to scrabble at the damnably smooth surface of the workbench, trying to find something, anything to hold onto as he felt Rick’s throat convulse around his cock. There was no chance, no chance at all that he was going to last. Rick didn’t seem to mind, unrelenting as he worked his head up and down. He let his teeth scrape along the shaft, even bit at Morty none too lightly, groaning all the while like Morty’s cock was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted.

But it wasn’t until he looked up, when his eyes locked with Morty’s and they both froze, Morty’s cock buried to the hilt in his grandfather’s mouth, that Morty finally came. It was as far from the short little orgasms he’d gotten from his own hand as the sun is from a zippo lighter. The shock of it, after such a drawn out delay, after so much emotion and so much pain and _so much_ , hit him like a physical blow. Rick lifted up a hand and pressed the side of it to Morty's lips. Morty understood and bit down hard, tasting his grandfather’s blood and not sure what it meant or why Rick had offered but profoundly grateful that he had something real and solid to grab onto, something hot and salty covering his tongue and rooting him in the moment as his orgasm tore through him.

Rick swallowed Morty's release with a will, moaning as he felt Morty’s teeth sink into the meat of his hand while his cock twitched against the back of his throat. He wished he could taste Morty’s cum, but pulling back even an inch was inconceivable. Not when Morty was looking at him like that. Like he’d hung the moon and the stars and everything in between.

Finally it stopped and Morty began to go soft in his mouth. He let go of Rick’s hand, and Rick took that as his cue to pull off of his dick.

When he did so he got some little taste of cum. Morty tasted like salted sweetness.

He wanted more.

Immediately he turned around and grabbed the camera, reaching beneath what looked like a wing and pressing until it shut off, all its appendages snapping back into place.

He set it on the table. He could feel Morty staring at him.

“Rick…” Rick took a drink. “That was…” Morty reached for Rick’s hand, but Rick quickly stepped back. 

“Yeah. Agreed. Just don’t think about it, Morty. It’ll be fine.”

He practically ran up the stairs, making a beeline for his room, draining his flask without taking a breath. _Yeah, you can really suck it down, can’t you, old man?_

He shuddered, shoving through his door and collapsing onto his bed. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling around inside his coat for his third, emergency flask. Checking his lower pockets, his hand passed over the painfully hard bulge in his pants. He hissed at the contact.

_That is your grandson, you sick, sick fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never written smut before, so please let me know how I did!
> 
> Is this something I should continue, or bury in the backyard and never speak of or think about again? 
> 
>  
> 
> _(Oh look, it's the same exact thought Rick's having! That's always a good sign, right?)_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick ran off, because, you know, _Rick_. Morty is left pissed and horny. (Minimal porn in this chapter, sorry guys.)
> 
> The next chapter will start with Rick showing back up, so you'll probably be more or less fine understanding-wise if you skip this chapter. I was just having trouble getting the characters where I wanted them to be (ie fucking) right away, and this helped make it feel more natural to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, and it really isn't intended to read that way, but tw: self harm. technically. (for masochism reasons, but still.)

Morty was rarely certain. There’d been a time when he thought this was normal, that probably everyone went around unsure what that stray thought meant, why they made that stupid joke, how long it would take for this new, tenuous stability to collapse. Morty had thought it was okay. 

Of course Rick showed him different. Rick taught him that certainty was not only common but necessary. A lack was a flaw, and not the sort Morty could just accept either. Now uncertainty made him anxious, made his stammer stick in his throat in a way he hated. It made him hesitate, knowing there was no rationality behind his hesitation but afraid all the same that any significant force could shove him out of existence and into a place where two things could be at once—dead and alive, right and wrong, cared for and not. 

Just figures that wherever Rick was concerned, certainty simply wasn’t possible.

That night he threw out the tattered remains of his underwear, still wet with his blood and precum. He gathered his other clothes from the floor of the garage, and stood at the bottom of the stairs for a long time, holding them against his chest. He didn’t let himself think as he stood there, his mind a kind of white static trying to drown out the hope that Rick would come back. It wasn’t impossible. He was impulsive. Maybe he’d throw open the door and tumble drunkenly down the stairs, yelling at Morty for the hole the acid had eaten in concrete. Maybe he’d sober up, sharp and sudden as he sometimes did, and shove Morty up against a wall, finish whatever tests he’d meant to run before…

It would be better if he didn’t leave, didn’t get dressed yet, just in case. Wouldn’t want Rick to have to come up to his room. He’d be pissed that Morty had left. Morty could practically see it. He’d hear Rick coming, and try to get out of his pajamas as quickly as possible so they wouldn’t be destroyed. When the door finally slammed open Rick would stumble in like a drunken storm, swaying and angry and cussing Morty out in that rough, caustic way he had. He’d collapse onto Morty’s bed, knife in hand. Morty could imagine the awful rip of the knife digging into his mattress, the anxiety of knowing he’d have to explain it to his parents. After that Rick would pull himself up and there’d be nothing gentle in it, no slow build up this time. Morty couldn’t decide how exactly Rick would cut him, but he knew it would be deep and clumsy—even Rick wouldn’t be able to keep his hands steady at the rate he was going through flasks. Maybe the serum would even have worn off a bit by then. Maybe Morty would scream.

His stomach dropped at the thought of his screams actually _doing_ something, summoning someone. He wasn’t an idiot. It would look bad. Even if he explained it was all science, the blood and the knife and Rick chugging at his flask. All science, and his hard on was just… just a weird thing. Not anything to do with _Rick_ , exactly, and he was naked because—

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Morty tried to focus on the static in his head. Tried to ignore the lingering feeling of Rick’s lips sealed around his dick.

Until he heard the sounds of people moving around upstairs, and realized with a jolt that he’d spent his entire night in the garage.

He snuck up to his room as surreptitiously as he could, just narrowly avoiding Summer on her way to breakfast. She was texting as she walked and didn’t investigate the sound of his hurried stumble as he ran for cover.

He was disappointed by his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Not so much as a bruise. He felt empty, lacking in the little twinges and aches that should be filling him up, reminding him that last night happened, that it was _real_.

Rick didn’t come to breakfast.

School dragged out long and hard, Morty twitching with the expectation that at any moment Rick would walk through a portal and drag him out of this tedium. He eventually gave up on puzzling through the work of quizzes and tests, just writing best guess answers. Rick hadn’t let him get through an entire day of school in over a month.

Let alone two entire days.

Let alone three entire days.

Let alone an entire fucking three and a half weeks, and _what the **hell** Rick? What gives you the right?_

Morty wasn’t sure exactly when he’d started talking to himself, but he knew who he blamed. He cursed him out under his breath all the way home.

As soon as he got home it was straight to his room, stripping the second he got his door closed, reaching under the mattress for the knife he’d stolen from Rick’s lab. He threw down the bloodstained towel he’d stolen from the bathroom, tugging it out over his bedsheets—of course he would wash it late at night, try to get the worst of the stains out, but there’s only so much you can do once it’s dried, and it always seemed to dry faster than he would expect. Or maybe he was just too busy trying to focus on the fantasy to bother with things like time and the scratch of dried blood against his skin.

He crawled on top of the towel, the tip of his already half-hard dick dragging along the rough material. He shuddered, and twisted onto his back.

This wasn’t just jerking off.

He let the knife slide along his skin, not pressing at all, the weight of the metal not even enough to break the surface. It felt like a cold promise. A tease. 

He had bandages in his dresser drawer. He had old cuts that hadn’t healed and that he knew to avoid. He had to be sparing. He had to be careful.

He pressed down, and Rick’s name tumbled from his lips as his cock went from half-mast to rock hard in the second it took the knife’s kiss to turn to a bite. He watched the blood well for a moment. Entranced he brought a finger down and wet it, brought it to his lips.

_Cannibalism. Nice. Really going in a good direction here, Morty._

“Sh-shut up, Rick,” he murmured to himself, and sucked the blood down.

It tasted like metal, but unexpectedly sweet. He thought of steaks seared in brown sugar, the way Rick had cooked them when they’d been hunting for some rare alien eggs on a jungle planet. They’d killed the mama monster, captured the eggs, but Morty had felt bad. He’d wanted to bury the monster, because all it had been doing was being a good mother. Rick had laughed.

“You think burying means shit? It’s just a, a, not even a rule everywhere on _Earth_ , Morty, why do you, you don’t actually think it matters out _here,_ do you?”

“Maybe not, Rick, but we shouldn’t just leave her! It’s wrong, and—”

“Fi-UERP, fine, _Morty_ , stop whining, you little piece of shit. Here, take this, go set something on fire.” He shoved a blowtorch into Morty’s chest.

“Are we gonna cremate her?”

Rick had laughed, digging around the back of his ship for supplies. “No, we’re going to something that actually ma-EURP, that’s actually worth shit.”

Morty had looked up, hopeful at the note of sincerity. “Yeah, Rick?”

“I’m gonna teach you to grill, baby!”

By the end of the day Morty had tripped over a weapon Rick had thrown aside, fallen onto some hot coals and burned his forearm horribly. Rick had laughed, and finished his drink before he came over to pick up his whimpering grandson. He’d tucked Morty against his chest, letting him wrap his legs around Rick’s waist—the movement had been automatic, a simple grip to keep himself from falling. Of course it wasn’t enough to keep him secure when they reached the ship and Rick let Morty fall to the ground, landing in a heap as Rick dug around in the trunk. When he found what he was looking for he yanked Morty up and close, and began to rub a healing gel into the raw, bubbling skin of his forearm. It wasn’t long before the healing gel began to burn afresh, melting the damaged skin off and regrowing a fresh layer in its place. At first Morty managed to stay still, but after a few moments he began to whine and then pant and then as Rick pressed in extra hard over a particularly bad patch he let out a howl and tried to twist away. But Rick’s grip on Morty’s upper arm was past firm, holding him steady as he writhed in earnest, desperate to get away from the steady, calloused fingers unflinchingly rubbing fire deep into Morty’s skin.

“Whiny peace of shit, stop, stop _wriggling_. Grandpa’s gonna fix you up, just, _fuck_ , just stay still.”

For days after Morty had treasured the lingering feeling of Rick’s hands on him, the bruises from his grip and the memory of the burn. He’d tried to recreate at least some small part of it, pressing into the soft new skin as hard as he could. He even tried heating a spoon over the stove and tapping that lightly to his arm, but it wasn’t the same. He could capture the pain of the moment decently well, but there was something about Rick’s hands on him he couldn’t quite mimic, a violent tenderness. 

Reaching down now, Morty pressed hard against one of his old cuts, and gasped.

All of his memories of pain revolved around Rick. Rick hurting him, Rick mocking him, and Rick fixing him up again.

This wasn’t just jerking off. This was as close to a prayer as Morty could get.

“Riiiiiiick,” he whined, bucking up into thin air as he pushed hard on the old cut, and brought his other hand down again to dab up the bit of fresh blood that had welled to the surface, brought it to his lips. He wanted something to bite on; he wanted something to taste.

He remembered Rick’s hand in his mouth, the salt and lingering taste of some sort of oil before he bit. After that it was all copper, tangy and surprisingly sweet. 

He licked the bit of blood from his own finger and felt his dick twitch. 

_Fucking filthy. Are you really getting off thinking about your grandpa hurting you? Thinking about him cutting you so deep you have to bite right back to keep the screams in? Wonder what he’d have to say, if he knew how sick his little grandson_ really _is._

Morty whined, and felt his cock leak across his stomach. Unable to resist any longer, he reached down and jerked himself hard and rough until he came apart with a desperate whimper. 

Lying there, cum drying on his chest, he felt hollow. 

He cleaned himself up, taped a bandage over the fresh cut, careful that it wouldn’t bleed through onto his shirt, and went down to dinner.

At the table, the family had already begun to eat. No one commented on his late arrival, Jerry prattling on about his dull day, excited that his bi-monthly invitation to the family table fell on a night without Rick.

“—which is when I realized, the trick to perfect pork chops is a low heat, so they cook evenly without—”

“Get a job,” Summer and Beth chorused in bored unison.

Morty fidgeted with his fork, wincing internally at the pathetic smile Jerry shot his way. _Stop it. Stop trying to make me your ally._

__Jerry frowned, and turned to Beth and Summer. “You know, this is what’s wrong with this family. Here we have a few days of peace and you have to spoil it by saying Rick’s lines _for him._ ”_ _

__“Peace? You call it ‘peaceful’ not knowing where my father is? Not knowing i— _when_ he’s coming back?!”_ _

__Morty pushed at his mashed potatoes._ _

__“Please, you know Rick! He’s probably just off banging some bagoos on planet space, not a care in the world for what he’s, how he’s…” Jerry shot a guilty glance at Morty._ _

__Morty almost wanted to laugh, and then immediately wondered why. There wasn’t any secret irony to what Jerry was saying. Morty didn't care if Rick was having sex with some hot alien somewhere. It wouldn’t be a particular sort of betrayal any worse than the simple fact of Rick’s absence. Rick didn’t even know about Morty’s weird little thoughts, let alone have any obligation to them._ _

__The cut on his stomach ached pleasantly._ _

__Dinner ended on a quiet note. Jerry left, awkward in the face of Beth’s furious silence. Beth moved into the kitchen, sitting at the table with a second bottle._ _

__Morty helped Summer clear the table._ _

__In the kitchen she squeezed his shoulder. He looked over, taken aback at the gentleness of her smile. She spoke quietly, not wanting to pull their mom out of whatever world she’d left them for._ _

__“Listen, Morty, he’s not—”_ _

__When Morty saw the green light on her face it took him a moment to process._ _

__Naturally a moment was all Rick needed to stumble in, grab Morty with a muttered, “There the fuck you are,” shoot another portal, and drag his stunned grandson through without a word of explanation._ _

__Just before they stepped through Morty heard a glass shatter at the kitchen table. He didn’t look back. He didn’t think he’d be able to stomach his mother’s relief, the silent plea she’d direct his way. Not that he needed to see her face to know the words, hearing them clear as day in his head, in her voice—_ _

___Bring him back._ _ _

__And then they’d stepped through, and he couldn’t hear anything other than the music._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figuring this out meant I deleted most of what I had, but also got me nice and inspired, so I've got 3,000 words of the next chapter already done.
> 
> You have tentacles and weird-ass exhibitionism to look forward to my friends ;)
> 
> Meanwhile, anyone else think masturbation is hot? ...No? Just me?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh look! It's Rick and Morty Put on a Live Snuff Show time! :D
> 
> (In other news: fictional characters still refuse to fuck, despite the fact their story is _literally porn._ local author goes mad with frustration.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I am trying to write you guys the porn, but... it just... keeps being like this? angsty almost-porn? _*sigh*_
> 
> At least this time there are some tentacles. And an audience. (They don't get fucked by the tentacles yet. I know. Nothing is fair.)

The music pulsed, thick and almost physical in the air, a destabilizing beat that pounded out from the stage, up through the floor, down Morty’s spine and to the tips of his teeth. He closed his eyes and leaned into the anchor of Rick’s hand on his shoulder, furious with himself for letting the past few weeks melt away so easily, for letting Rick think for even a second that things were okay.

After a moment Morty took a steadying breath, tasting the metallic edge to the air that meant caves and still water. _On Earth. Here it might mean anything._ He opened his eyes and looked up at Rick, as he scanned the crowd with a tight-lipped scowl. He felt Rick’s hand tighten on his shoulder, pulling him towards a shaded corner booth. 

_Nothing out here means what you think it means._

Rick pushed Morty in first before following after, eyes never leaving the crowd. Peering past Rick, Morty watched a reveler the size and approximate shape of an elephant snatch up what appeared to be a blue glob with eyes pulsing beside it, and swallow the glob whole. The elephant alien immediately began to swell, turning first green and then blue and then finally bursting, raining down on the rest of the dancers as a fine blue powder.

If anyone screamed Morty couldn’t hear it over the music.

“Rick?” He was surprised to find that at least in their small booth he didn’t have to raise his voice. He could still feel the vibrations of the music in his throat, the tips of his fingers. “What’s going on? I think I’m being pretty, pretty chill here considering you just showed up after aban— after leaving the family like that. Again.” 

Rick ignored him. 

Morty huffed, reaching out to grab Rick’s shoulder, make him at least look at Morty, force _something_ other than indifference out of him, but to his shock Rick flinched—and then froze, as if surprised at his own reaction.

“…Rick?”

Rick whirled on him, crowding him further into the booth with the force of his glare. “What, Morty? D-d-did you, did you have some important dishes you needed to wash? Did I interrupt a big, a-a-a critical moment in your life? Watching you parents marriage slowly dissolve even _without_ me around such a fascinating exercise in the extremes of incompatibility that you can’t stand to be, to be torn away?”

Morty flushed, but refused to back down, shifting forward; back into the space Rick had crowded him out of. “You can’t just—”

“Rick Sanchez!”

Morty jumped almost a mile. Somehow a strange alien had slid into the booth next to him and Rick without his noticing, and now sat so close he could smell the brine glistening on its skin—skin which shifted even as Morty watched, going from an abyssal black to something perfectly matching the color and texture of the corner booth and back again in a moment. 

“Hey, Thulu.” Rick didn’t so much as bat an eye, though his arm slipped casually around Morty’s shoulders. Morty shivered, and couldn’t for the life of him have said why. “You got the money?”

“Awfully demanding for someone who’s been dodging my contacts for three weeks.” Morty tried not to stare as Thulu smiled. He was fairly sure it was a smile. Maybe it was simply baring its teeth. _Like a lion and an octopus had a terrifying baby._ “You can’t expect the terms to have gone unchanged?”

Morty let himself sink into the shelter of Rick’s arm. It almost seemed like Rick relaxed around him as he did, but he couldn’t be sure.

“I expect that you’re not going to try to fuck me on this. Unless you want to start looking for another asshole to make your non-Euclidian flurry bomb or whatever fucked up, impossible shit you want, of course. Here, I’ll save you the time: no such peEURPson. Just me.”

Thulu laughed. “Fucked up shit? My commissions are nothing if not reputable in intention. Hardly my fault if the execution is… creative.”

Rick snorted. “Creative is what keeps your gang ahead of those fish people you like to snack on.”

A pair of thin red tongues darted out of Thulu’s mouth, flicking across its lips appreciatively. “Reminds me, you should really try the sushi here. But my point remains: this is a mutually beneficial relationship, and you’ve kept me waiting past your deadline.” Morty stared in transfixed horror as a pair of tentacles extended from the creature’s writhing main, reaching out towards Morty. He half expected Rick to intervene, but his grandfather didn’t even tense when Thulu made contact, one tentacle tracing along Morty’s cheek, while the other twisted inquisitively through his hair, gasping carelessly at small tufts, and pulling in a way that made Morty dig his fingernails into his palm. The texture of the one against his cheek was akin to wet rubber, smooth and soft in a way that really shouldn’t have been alive. “I know you know I’m in the right here, Sanchez. Why else bring this lovely little peace offering?”

Morty had been trying to hold as still as possible, but at that he tried to shoot Rick a terrified look—only for the tentacles to suddenly turn strong as steal, the one on his cheek curving under his jaw, the one on his head tight as a vice. He gave a muffled yelp, unable to open his mouth as Rick’s grip on his shoulder became bruising. 

“Oh come now Sanchez, since when do you care about a lab rat?”

“He’s not on the table, Thulu.” Morty desperately wished he could see Rick’s face. His voice was even rougher than usual, low and pissed and something else Morty couldn’t quite place.

“If you’re truly nervous to leave him alone with me, we could always share.”

Morty’s eyes went wide as the tentacles not currently holding him in place fanned like something unholy around Thulu’s face, thickening and pulsing with color. Thulu had only one eye, yellow with a black bar like a goat's, yet somehow its leer still managed to be almost mockingly suggestive.

“Don’t be sick, Thulu. That’s my grandson.”

Whatever reaction Morty had been expecting, it was not what he got. The tentacles tightened as Thulu threw its head back, and began to laugh. 

f

Morty remembered a trip to the beach as a child, the roar of the waves echoing deep inside an empty cave. He’d been so excited, happening upon it, and the sound had been fine at the mouth, but as he explored farther and farther back the roar grew and grew, multiplying against the wet stone until suddenly in an instant he realized he’d been almost running, and in the same moment tripped, his flashlight falling and cracking against the stone—and he was alone. In the dark. He’d drawn his knees up to his chest, put his hands over his ears, and began to cry, the sound of waves thundering about him. 

When Thulu laughed, Morty could feel the slick cold of the stone, seeping through his jeans.

He shuddered. 

The tentacles held his head still.

Rick’s grip on his shoulder loosened ever so slightly. His thumb began to rub small circles into Morty’s arm. It was almost certainly an unconscious gesture, not really meant to help— _that wasn’t the sort of thing Rick would think to do_ —but all the same, Morty felt himself relax, just a little bit. All thoughts of holding Rick accountable for his absence and staking his independence had vanished the second that alien monster touched him. 

Finally Thulu’s laugh died down.

“You are one sick bastard, Sanchez.” The tentacle holding Morty’s chin relaxed somewhat, the tip stroking along his throat. “He is the one from the video, yes?”

“Wait, you _actually sent that out?!_ ” Morty would have punched Rick if he could have turned to look at him, but no sooner had the words left than the tentacle pushed warningly against the pulse jumping just below his chin. 

“You are simply adorable,” Thulu purred, eye crinkling in what might have been amusement. “But please, your grandfather and I are talking business.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rick shrug. “What’d you want me to do, Morty? Reshoot it?”

Morty felt himself flush, averting his eyes from Thulu’s amused face.

He heard more than saw Rick take another pull from his flask.

Thulu looked between the two of them, and suddenly its good humor vanished. “Oh, Rick. I know your home planet is a bunch of back-bred cave-dwellers, but you can’t expect me to be so stupid. You care for this child of yours, don’t you?”

Rick laughed, and Morty wished he could turn away, scoot down the booth and get away from that awful, careless sound. “Are you kidding? Morty’s are a dime a dozen. Hell, I’ve even gotta, a coupon for a replacement, soon as this one kicks it.”

Morty felt his chest go cold. Of course he knew about the coupon, but Rick had never mentioned it, never admitted it. He’d thought… if nothing else he’d thought Rick at least cared enough to pretend.

“Well then, you won’t mind if I take him for the night. And if he’s that disposable…” The tentacle on Morty’s neck began to heat, and to press.

Morty began to panic.

He grabbed at Rick, one hand twitching towards Rick’s grip on his shoulder, the other flying out blindly to Rick himself, landing on his thigh and eliciting what Morty could only describe as a growl as he dug frightened fingers into his grandfather’s lean muscle. 

“Knock it off!” Rick said, smacking Morty’s hand away from his thigh. “You too!”

Instantly the tentacles retreated. Morty fell forward, coughing and clutching at his throat.

“What are you hoping to accomplish with this?” Thulu asked.

Without lifting his head from the table, Morty turned to look up at Rick, whose laser pistol was trained directly on Thulu’s face.

“R-rick?” It came out as barely more than a breath. Morty hated it. His throat ached.

“Cut the crap, Thulu. You know better than to fuck with my stuff.”

“And you know better than to try to con me. And before you start ranting about what an untouchable God you are, know that I hired another Rick to build an anti-portal device that I activated the minute you showed up, along with a few other security measures.” No fewer than ten guards materialized seemingly out of nowhere, each wearing the club’s colors and hefting don’t-fucking-think-about-it weaponry. 

Rick raised half of his unibrow and leaned back, unimpressed—but the hand that had been on Morty’s shoulder before Morty collapsed onto the table now found Morty’s wrist, and began rubbing small circles into his skin. Morty relaxed marginally.

“You think you can scare me with the woEURP, with the toys of some citadel hack?”

“You care about this offspring of yours, clearly far too much to test out something as dangerous as the serum on him. Which means the video was a forgery, and you intended to sell me faulty product.”

Rick and Morty looked at each other, and in the same instant burst out laughing. This time Rick’s laugh sounded natural, no harsh angry edge. For his part, Morty could hardly breath. He leaned back against the booth, clutching at sides as he tried to get ahold of himself. Beside him Rick’s hand fell on his wrist again, and the ease of it, the gentle, unhesitating possession set Morty off all over again. _Fucking hysterical._ He couldn’t have said if the thought referred to Thulu’s comment, his and Rick’s relationship, or his own response.

“Dude, Thulu, that shit doesn’t crack the top, doesn’t even make the fucking list!”

“It’s true!” Morty added, still wheezing slightly. “There’s nothing he wouldn’t put me through.”

Thulu eyed him. “Really.”

“Oh yeah! H-he, he once, one time he passed out in a lava monster’s lair and I— Or, or no, there was a time with these organ harvesters, and he broke back in just to—” Morty wiped at his eyes, fighting to get words out in between wheezing laughs.

Beside him Rick had fallen silent.

“Wait, actually, here’s a good, here’s one—you know he once fed me to a pissed off lizard monster? It really ate me too, not just a ploy or, or something. It broke my arm biting, biting down on me before I escaped down its throat. Escaped! Down its throat! Haha, god Rick, I was stuck in its stomach acid for, what, days? However long it takes to lose almost all your skin! You remember, by the, by the time you got me? You said it was great, got some real, some real good science shit out of it, readings or whatever and, and where the stomach stuff hadn’t eaten all the way through you could see all my veins the way my muscles moved—haha, didn’t even fix me that whole night, just put me on the table and ran experiments with blood flow!” 

“Oh yeah.” Rick’s hand had withdrawn from Morty’s wrist. “Forgot about that one.” He pulled out his flask and took a gulp.

Thulu watched him.

“I’m surprised. You’re usually a better liar than this, Rick.”

“I’m not lying,” Rick growled. He glanced away. “Neither is Morty. He’s my, my helper, which means—” He took a drink. He met Thulu’s gaze again, and when he spoke his voice was low and even. “It means helping out with some dangerous shit. That’s just how it is.”

Thulu considered him, head tilted slightly to the side, tentacles twitching at currents in the air too delicate for Morty to feel.

“Prove it.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you don’t care, prove it. Test the serum on him again, here, in the club.”

Morty’s blood went cold.

“Rick, please, I, I know you’ve done some, done some things but—” 

_But you know what this would do to me. Please. Please don’t… Not in public. Not in front of people who know, know we’re…_

But Rick just shrugged. “Shut it Morty. Sure, Thulu, no proEURPlem.” He grabbed Morty by the arm, yanking him out of the booth. “Come on.”

Fast as a striking snake, a tentacle shot out, wrapping around Morty’s other arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Morty could not explain where the murderous rage that swept across Rick’s face came from or why it vanished so quickly, but for a second Morty thought Rick might leap across the table and simply beat the smug grin off the alien’s face. _(God, there are more teeth in that grin than any creature needs to have.)_ Instead, Rick scoffed. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. The inconvenience of escaping would just barely exceed the annoyance of carrying out your little snuff show. I was just taking Morty to the bathroom so he can slick himself up.”

Morty winced at the wording, but before he could say something to clarify Rick was pulling again, hard. “I said come on, Morty.”

As quick as the first, another tentacle lashed out, wrapping around the wrist in Rick’s grip. In a fraction of a heartbeat both tentacles had yanked Morty back down—though not exactly _straight_ down. Thulu pulled forward, so Morty was slammed face down into the table, the breath knocked out of him, his arms stretched out taught toward the alien. The edge of the table was high, clearly not meant for humans, and with his hips pulled up to the edge Morty’s toes just barely scraped the ground.

“Not a chance, Sanchez. This happens right here, right now, where I can see, with the serum you were going to sell me.”

Morty heard another flask clatter to the ground as Rick finished it off. “Fine. Ease up though. Not like he’s going anywhere.”

Something in Morty twitched at Rick’s words, at the cold anger that had returned, Morty could only guess, the instant Thulu touched what was his. _You fucking bastard. You’re really going to do it. And after, after you just left, just abandoned me for_ weeks _without a word._ He felt his thoughts stumbling over each other, panic pushing his brain into overdrive. _And now you think, think you can just drop in out of nowhere, drag me out to some alien bar, with no escape, no exit, spread me over a table, like something helpless, like, like something worthless, just meat, in front of everyone, just a toy for you to test, and expect me to just lie down and—_

Rick’s hand was cold on his back, pushing up under his shirt. 

“Grandpa’s gonna do the prep work for you this time, okay Morty?” Everthing in Rick’s tone was different. Callous roughness replaced with something soft, unhurried, and not at all angry. He stroked up and down Morty’s spine. Morty couldn’t breath. “I… I’m going to make sure you don’t miss a spot like before.”

Morty tried to twist around at that, preparing a protest—he hadn’t missed anywhere last time—but the tentacles holding his wrists down were firm. He felt another tentacle reach out and feel gently along the back of his pinned hands. Had the texture changed? Morty tried to shift away, and felt Rick’s eyes travel up his body to the point where Thulu held him down.

“Rick, please…”

Rick laser pistol was up again and pointed straight at Thulu. “Next appendage of yours that touches him is coming off.”

Thulu laughed, causing Morty to shudder, flying back to the cave and the cold and the damp stone for a moment—before Thulu nodded to the guards, and Morty realized every single one of them had trained their weapons not on Rick, but on him. Rick didn’t so much as glance their way until Thulu released Morty’s wrists.

Morty rubbed them, grateful. But when he tried to sit up Rick firmly pushed his head back down, and _oh_ , well _that_ was a noise Morty sincerely hoped he would never make in public again.

Suddenly he felt hot breath at his ear. “Thulu’s species are fast motherfuckers. You want me close for this.”

Morty nodded minutely. When Rick leaned back up he brought Morty with him, holding Morty so his back was to Rick’s chest. When Rick started to pull his shirt off Morty raised his hands automatically.

He averted his gaze from Thulu. He could feel the alien’s eye hungrily tracing his bare chest, and wished absurdly that Rick would wrap him up in his labcoat. Any semblance of protection.

Rick reached around him and undid his belt, yanking his pants down roughly. His underwear followed hardly a second later. Morty’s hands flew to cover his half-hard dick.

“Rick! What are you—”

“You remember what happened last time? You want to ruin a fresh pair? No? Then shut up and get on the table.” Morty was bright red, but when he started to turn around Rick stopped him, grabbing his arm hard enough to bruise. “Face down is fine. No need to make this any worse than it is.”

“Oh, uh, okay Rick.” Morty clambered awkwardly onto the table, glad that at least he didn’t have to worry about accidentally shoving his dick in his grandpa’s face. Not that wiggling his naked ass around was much better, but… well. At least this way maybe Rick wouldn’t notice his grandson’s idiot cock was somehow finding _something_ about this interesting.

He laid out on the table, as close to the edge (and Rick) as possible.

He felt the serum hit his skin, square between his shoulder blades. It was colder than he remembered.

***

_Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck **fuck.**_

Rick stared down at his hands, thumbs rubbing slow circles over the dimples just above Morty’s tailbone. _Fuck._ It took some serious effort not to say the word out loud. 

_Please. Like you didn’t anticipate this._

He was stalling. He’d worked his way up from Morty’s feet, and kept it together pretty well all the way to midway up his grandson’s thigh. When he’d felt his hands start to shake and Morty had raised his head to look back, mouth open on a question the kid _definitely_ did not want an answer to—when he felt Thulu’s god damn smirk boring into him with extra edge—yeah. He decided to skip up to Morty’s shoulders and work his grandson over from the neck down.

_Phrasing._

It had been an admittance of defeat when he finally rolled Morty over and covered his chest and the very tops of his thighs with the serum. When he held a hand over Morty’s throat, stroked his thumb across the burn Thulu had left over his grandson’s adam’s apple, when he felt it bob as Morty swallowed. When he tried not to linger over Morty’s nipples, tried to ignore the sounds Morty made at even the lightest, most ghosting touch. A failure when he’d flipped Morty back over without finishing the job, needing to muffle him, needing to not see his face contort as he tried to hide these little half-noises, vocalizations with no voice behind them, things that would be moans and whimpers if Morty wasn’t trying so desperately… 

All of that. All an acknowledgement of failure. Rick’s failure.

_Awfully self-flagellating for a guy getting exactly what he wants._

Rick wanted to take an axe and swing it into the smug little voice in the back of his head. 

Instead he grabbed his flask, took a drink. It must have been his third flask of the night. Fourth?

“Are you quite done, Rick?”

Rick shot Thulu a look. When this was done he was going to take that knock-off hentai monster apart bit by wriggly bit.

But for now, he couldn’t risk leaving Morty vulnerable.

_Sure._

At first, he’d just rubbed the serum in. An observer might even have thought it was clinical. But _shit_ the way Morty _moved_ in his grip, bucking back and then tensing all over, knowing he shouldn’t have, knowing this was wrong, probably thinking—

“Keep it together, Morty, for fuck’s sake,” Rick muttered. 

Rick felt Morty flinch at the words.

Ignoring the throb that drew from his already very tight pants, Rick took another drink. 

Then, finally, he began to knead the serum into his grandson’s ass. _Just being thorough._ He massaged carefully, getting the thick serum all over until Morty glistened. _God his skin is way too smooth. How does he not have more scars by now? How…_ He squeezed lightly, and Morty stifled a whimper. A thought occurred, and Rick ran his thumb between Morty’s cheeks, pausing for just a second over Morty’s puckered hole. He felt it flutter under his touch. 

Morty shuddered, and Rick felt every bit of him _ache_.

“Christ, Morty, we’re in public. Could you stop being a sick perv for five seconds while Grandpa tries to make sure you don’t bleed to death once I start cutting into you?”

He flipped Morty over again, and could not put into words the emotions that tightened in his chest at the tears just beginning to leak from Morty’s eyes, or the deliciously panicked flush that had spread across his grandson’s chest.  
“F-f-fuck you, Rick! I, I d-don’t…” Morty took a breath, looking away as his tears started to spill over in earnest.

Without thinking Rick pulled him to his chest, a hand around his waist, another cradling his head, fingers buried in his soft brown curls. “Hey, hey, it’s fine.” He shifted his hips. He felt Morty stiffen as he felt Rick’s hardness. Immediately he tried to pull back but Rick held him tighter. “We’ve all got our weird shit.”

“W-wait, Rick, I don’t think we— I, I mean, I don’t really want—”

“Shut up, Morty,” Rick said, before Morty could say something Rick didn’t feel like hearing—not four flasks in, when Rick was already resisting the urge to pull Morty flush against him and grind until they both came apart, his name on Morty’s lips. _Sick bastard._ “I’m not an idiot.”

Rick continued to pet Morty, glaring at Thulu all the while. To his credit, Thulu didn’t say a word, just met his gaze evenly. _Well you aren’t exactly proving him wrong. What the fuck are you doing?_ But he didn’t stop. Morty was still tense in his arms, choking down breathy sobs, clearly not at all sure how to deal with the revelation that his grandpa was just as hard as he was. Rick sighed in annoyance. “Maldito idiota ¿No puedes reconocer una disculpa cuando sientes un roce contra tu pene?” 

Rick had been careful to exclude earth languages from the universal translators he had implanted in the whole family years ago—none of them would questions aliens that speak perfect English, but he’d never hear the end of it about personal boundaries and shit if they suddenly understood Chinese.

So naturally, Thulu cocked his head, understanding Rick’s Spanish as easily as English—but Morty shot a confused look Rick’s way. Rick rolled his eyes. “¿Que?”

To his surprise, Morty leaned his head back down on Rick’s shoulder, clearly ready to take the soft sounding words and just let whatever meaning they might have go. “Oh, entonces todo lo que tengo que hacer es decir cosas que no entiendas, y estarás bien. Perfecto.” Slowly Morty stopped crying. “Cristo, no me digas que tienes algún tipo de vicio lenguaje jodido.”

Rick kept petting, gentle Spanish a warm breath against the crown of Morty’s head, until finally Morty’s breathing evened out. He relaxed into Rick’s arms.

As soon as he was calm Rick began to lower him back down, but remembered afresh that his grandson was very naked, and apparently still very, very hard.

Realizing the same thing in the same moment, Morty blushed and looked away. 

_Yeah, definitely a language kink. Good to know._

_No, it isn’t good to know. Because you don’t care. Because why would you care about that._

“Morty, look at me.” Rather than lay Morty back all the way Rick spread some serum on his hand and reached between them. He kept his eyes on Morty’s lips, unable to meet his grandson’s gaze and unable to completely look away as he drew his hand up Morty’s thigh. He lingered for a moment, watching as Morty’s tongue flicked out to lick nervously at his lips, before Rick wrapped a serum filled his hand around the base of Morty’s dick. 

Morty’s entire body jerked at the contact, over-sensitive after such a prolonged state of arousal. 

_It’d be merciful to jerk him off. Get it over with so he can deal with the torture without it being quite so… torturous._

Rick gave Morty’s cock one light pump and watched Morty shudder. He squeezed a bit more serum over the head, rubbing it in with his thumb in slow circles, feeling a guilty twitch of enjoyment at the velvet smoothness of Morty’s cockhead under his rough, calloused fingers. He pressed down over his slit, letting the serum trickle in, and Morty’s lips fell open in a moan worthy of a pornstar. Rick half expected him to slap a hand over his own mouth, but when he finally met Morty’s gaze his eyes were heavy lidded and desperate.

It was that that decided him.

Rick took his hand off Morty’s dick, pointedly ignoring the unashamed whine that drew out of the boy, the way Morty leaned his head against Rick’s shoulder, planting and clutching the lapels of his labcoat.

He coated Morty’s testicles with quick, perfunctory strokes, watching the way the muscles in Morty’s bare back jerked in time with his almost harsh ministrations. Only when he was entirely done did he let Morty fall back onto the table, exhausted. It just so happened that Morty’s legs had come to rest around his grandfather’s waist, leaving him beautifully spread.

Rick smirked, stroking a hand along Morty’s leg before suddenly pinching the inside of Morty’s thigh as hard as he could. 

Morty shot up with a yelp. “Christ!” Rick met his glare with a grin and Morty fell back again, head thunking against the table, the heels of his hands pressing against his eyes. “God damn it, Rick! Please, just…” He tilted his hips up, gyrating ever so slightly, unable to say the word. His rock hard cock trailed precum across his stomach.

The bruise Rick had pinched into his skin began to darken—but no sooner was it purple than it was green and yellow and gone. Rick has seen a dying nebula collapse at hyperspeed. It had looked much the same: a motley of strange colors there and vanished in an instant.

Rick swung Morty’s legs up and pushed him back fully onto the table. “Just checking to make sure the serum set right.” He raised his eyes to Thulu. “Don’t suppose that’ll be enough for you?”

Thulu had leaned back, clearly enjoying his position in this little show. It was a rare pleasure to see have Rick so vulnerable, let alone _this_ Rick. He smiled. “Well, I suppose it demonstrates the theory well enough.”

For an instant Rick’s blood went cold, the prospect that he might lose this opportunity settling in for the first time. _Should have made him cum while you had the chance._ Then he saw Thulu’s smirk. A flood of loathing washed over him, though he couldn’t have said if the feeling was directed more at himself or his erstwhile buyer.

“But you hardly give a shit about theory.” 

“Now there’s the genius I hired. So, Rick. Did you bring your own instruments, or would you like to use mine?”

The obvious answer was to ask for some basic torture devices, but when Rick saw Morty’s blush deepen at the rich, low purr in Thulu’s voice something flared inside him. “Like I’d use your shiEURP, shitty equipment on my grandson.”

Thulu’s tentacles flared, flexing and relaxing like a deep, calming breath. “So then, you _did_ bring torture devices into my club, for what you imagined would be a standard handoff.”

“No, you knock-off hentai asswipe. I just don’t need gadgets to make my grandson scream.” He reached into an inside pocket, fished around, and pulled out a handful of loose pills, which he dropped on the table next to Morty’s bare thigh. He began sifting through them. And if his hand brushed against Morty more than was strictly necessary… _Are you seriously still trying to justify this shit, you sick son of a—_

“…what are you doing.” Thulu’s voice cut through his inner monologue.

At Rick’s lack of response Morty sat up, eyeing the pills with some concern as well. “Rick, maybe you should just take whatever he’s offering, I’m sure—”

“Shut up, MoEURP-orty.” Finding what he was looking for, Rick selected a small pill, with undulating pink and black stripes. He bit it in half, swallowing one portion. He then grabbed Morty by the jaw, forcing his mouth open and shoving the other half in before slapping a hand over Morty’s mouth. 

### 

Immediately Morty wanted to spit the pill out. Thanks to Rick’s cooking over the past few years Morty had developed some tolerance for spicy food, even learning to appreciate the particular flavor of certain, milder peppers. But this. This was worse than anything he had ever experienced, like an actual fire in his mouth, burning against his tongue and gums and the backs of his lips. Swallowing was inconceivable, impossible, he needed whatever this was out, needed it _gone_ , needed to drown himself in water, or milk, or _anything_ that might—

Rick pinched his nose.

“Stop fighting this, Morty.”

At his words Morty realized he had been holding still and began to thrash. Instantly tentacles shot out, pinning him to the table. Morty felt more than heard Rick’s growl, a deep rumble that moved from where Rick was, spread out above him, and sank deep into Morty’s bones, making him shiver even in his desperation.

Rick was staring past Morty straight at Thulu. Whatever the alien saw must have been fairly convincing, because the tentacles released Morty as quickly as they had pinned him. But even though Rick hadn’t taken either hand away from Morty’s mouth and nose, Morty didn’t take advantage of his newfound freedom. He quivered with the effort of holding still despite what might as well have been liquid nitric eating away at all available surfaces of his mouth and throat—but Rick met his eyes, and Morty knew he wouldn’t move. He’d hold still in a pool of lava if Rick looked at him like that. Like his pain was the most fascinating, beautiful thing in the multiverse. Like his writhing ranked above collapsing stars, above the birth of galaxies.

But still, it hurt so damn bad. Morty could feel tears leaking from his eyes, dripping down the sides of his face and into his hairline.

Rick leaned close, his breath warm against Morty’s ear.

“Swallow.”

Morty didn’t even think. Later he would tell himself it might have been the black encroaching at the corners of his vision, or a desperate hope for relief from the pain—but in the moment he had no delusions. He did it for Rick. Because Rick wanted it.

The burning stopped.

Morty sagged in relief, even as something deep within him shifted, empty at the loss.

But then Rick was running a hand up his side, a light trailing touch that made Morty shiver, arching ever so slightly, and _god_ he _still_ hasn’t cum, and he just needs a bit more, just something more to help—

He heard a slap. It was a light, almost playful sound.

What he _felt_ was an entirely different matter.

The blow moved through him, making his entire body jerk even as he arched up hard, a broken whine escaping him. Pain sparked across the area of impact, impossible in its intensity. Morty could feel the outline of Rick’s hand clear as day, could practically see it when his eyes slipped closed, glowing a fuzzy red in the dark of his mind. The quiet dark. Suddenly so quiet. So easy and still, gentle and safe…

This wasn’t like the knife.

Rick hit Morty again, this time a backhand against his inner thigh. Morty gasped, eyes flying open, mouth wide and working around a silent cry that wouldn’t come.

“Pay attention.”

Morty almost wanted to laugh at the idea that he could do anything other than pay attention, to this, to Rick… But still, he looked down.

The bruise bloomed beautifully, a deep mottled purple that went to faded all the way back to pink and then gone in the space of a shuddering breath.

“R-R-Rick… what…”

“You like it, Morty? It’s that little pill grandpa gave you, keys you into my touches.” He stroked up and down Morty’s side, and Morty decidedly did not want to think about how soothing the touch was even as with Rick’s eyes glinting wild and hungry. “The alignment of the kinetic—Every time I hit you it’ll have ten times the force, Morty. Twenty, thirty, whatever I want. I could punch clean through you or just…” He tapped a finger against Morty’s sternum and chuckled when Morty flinched. Morty’s dick twitched at the sound. “It’s a clumsy bit of tech, but I figured, some variety for, for the—we already showed off how well you take sharp, hot, acid, still got three main torture groups to go. Or two, might as well skip loud. That leaves blunt, cold.” 

He splayed his fingers across the left side of Morty’s chest, over his heart. Slowly, almost gently he pressed down. The switch came gradually and then all at once, and it was like the weight of ten men rested in the spread of Rick’s hand. And _fuck_ it hurt. It hurt in a slow way though, not the sharp sting of the knife but a hard steady press than forced everything else out, everything else away, no room for a single thought beyond _yes_ and _please_ and the worn litany of Rick’s name. 

And then Rick pulled back.

_Smack._

This time, Morty screamed.

Across the table, Thulu watched. Neither Rick nor Morty paid him any mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHY WON'T THEY JUST FUCK ALREADY. IS2G.
> 
> I just apparently have literally NO CONTROL AT ALL over these two?? it might be another 5,000 words of angsty almost-fucking, but—well comments are my crack and about 95% of why I write fic (the other 5% being the dark pit of sin that is my soul) and you guys seem decently okay with the fact porn still hasn't happened... right? most of you?
> 
> Also: what do you guys think of Thulu? more of him? less of him? (mostly I just wanted someone to make Rick jealous (¬‿¬) lbr)

**Author's Note:**

> _Kudos make Morty blush, but comments make Rick grin like something feral and hungry. ;)_


End file.
